No, use you own mics & DIs. I think every band that brings their own IEM rig needs a complete stage package - mics, cables, stands, sub-snakes, and a long enough split tail to reach the house input box. That means 50' at minimum and 75' would be better.

Minimize stands with Z-bars or Cab-Grabbers for guitar rigs, clip on mics for drums (with a drum cable loom), etc. The idea is that as soon as the PA inputs are muted you can disconnect the mic lines and strike the back line gear. We work with a lot of 'bus and trailer' bands that do exactly this. They can have the deck cleared of big stuff in 5 minutes, and another 5 min to get cables and the IEM rack off the stage. Some of them can do the whole thing in 5 minutes, it's amazing to watch.

Consider doing one more thing... keep a couple of spare lines in your splitter tail to house - you'll always need spares AND you can send a L/R mix from your X32 to the house in situations where the house cannot accommodate your needs (not enough inputs, inadequate house mixerperson etc.).

This was my strategy when I was with the band.

However, the reality in the club seems to be, while a couple bands have complete setups, many just have primary vocal mics and are looking to use my instrument mics plus a couple for backup vocals.

My suggestion of having their own mic package for consistency often gets blank looks as a response.

I mixed monitors for Darlene Love last weekend. She had her scaled down band and only needed 7 mixes. Only the bass player needed an in-ear mix. I plugged it into it's own omni on the Yamaha CL5 Reo rack and managed it easily enough. I just made sure not to blow out any eardrums!

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"Not so Mean" Scott LevineStrike Sound & Lighting

"There is nothing that can't be repaired or improved through the judicious use of gaffe tape."

Great input everyone. One question looms in my head. The mics/di's. I see it mentioned to swap off the house stuff into our box, then use put the tail into the house box. Makes sense, does using venue mic's cause for issues with the ear mix that cant be resolved quickly? Seems like you would have to do a more lengthy sound check potentially?

I only ask because I have run ears for years now, however it has always only been on my rig, with my mics. If the whole band goes on ears....we start using venue mics to ensure an expedited stage swap etc....any input on this?

Use your own stuff.. I run a X32 Producer. I chose this as it can be racked easily, but still gives access to physical sliders and buttons should the network connection fail.( like in a X32 Rack) We have that, and 6 IEM units, and patch bay with split, and wireless net work router all in 1 rack. I bring all my own mics for vocal and also stands usually. I have them all plugged in and ready to go and off to the side of the stage. When its our turn, I just hand the FOH our tails from our split with input list and they can plug them in where they want. We move our stands out front, move theirs off to the side, and are ready to go. ( All mic levels and checks to our board were done earlier) So then FOH just has to check levels. IF we are the main act, i many times will just let what other bands are playing use our mics. I just dont mess with anything on our board so when its our turn, its all good. Of course FOH might need to tweak input gains or what ever. but if they have the ability, usually they can just save a scene or what ever for our show, and just recall it quick. Drums for me are the biggest issue. I used to run them thru my board as well, but If using a back line kit ( common kit) I wont put them thru our board, i will just take a monitor feed from FOH with just drums in it, and put it back into my board as one input.. You dont get individual control of each drum, but you can contol the volume and FOH sets the mix. Then I started doing that if kits were swapped as well, as that reduces the number of channels that have to be swapped at FOH when doing a switch over Vs if all the drums as well go thru our board first.( 24 channels with drums 14 with out) ..Mics for drums can just be moved out of the way, swap kits and re-mic then just get 1 monitor mix from FOH back to our board and let the drummer determine the mix so they are happy, and we just turn that up or down in our personal mixes.. Hope that makes sense..

We rarely play a multi band event. But we do carry IEM rack, wireless mic rack, all mics, cables, drop snakes and stands to ensure our mix is as close as possible - venue to venue. No mic gain changes at sound check, just minor tweaks to the mix.

We rarely play a multi band event. But we do carry IEM rack, wireless mic rack, all mics, cables, drop snakes and stands to ensure our mix is as close as possible - venue to venue. No mic gain changes at sound check, just minor tweaks to the mix.

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We did this same thing for years. It works well, and most house engineers actually liked it. We handed them a transformer-isolated split and they did their thing while we did ours. We always carried our own microphones as well to keep things even more consistent.

Yeah I think, as people have said by far the easiest way to do it is an all in one set up, though of course it costs a lot more $.

A rack mixer (few choices available) and your IEM system in a rack together. All of the mics you're using get plugged into your rack (whether by drop boxes, or by cable looms, or just XLR straight to the rack) and then get split into the house stagebox. Any instruments that you aren't using for bigger or more complex bands just bypass your rack and go straight into the house.

That way you have all your channels and can mix as needed (can even use mobile phones or tablets so each band member can control his/her own mix) and FOH has their own split of everything so they can mix the show for the audience as needed.

And as said, the house engineers will probably than you that they can concentrate on the FOH mix and know that the IEMs are taken care of

On the small scale (clubs, etc.) I have a Behringer XR-18 and splitter with a router in one 6-spc. rack. Everyone can use their phones or tablets for one of 6 (or 8 if it's a dedicated monitor rig as it most often is) mono or 3-4 stereo monitor sends. House guys love it - even the ones who haven't seen it much as they suddenly realize they don't have to mess with monitors.On a larger scale, I just got off the road with a touring band playing 1-3K seats a night. It used dual Midas M32's, one for monitors and one FOH. A DL-32, 8 Senn IEM's and combiner were in a nicely portable rack with it. Again, the fact that we were self-contained and on/off stage in just minutes was well-appreciated. It's becoming the standard.